Burmese Days

One hot morning in April, U Po Kyin, a fat man aged 56, sits on his veranda and thinks about his life. As a child, he saw British troops march into Burma and decided to “become a parasite upon them.” At 20, though poor, he earned enough money through blackmail to buy a job as a government clerk. He got his first promotion by denouncing other clerks for theft (though he was stealing, too). By now he is a Subdivisional Magistrate. Though he makes money from bribes and racketeering, his superiors refuse to believe it, and his supporters protect him. He plans to avoid a bad reincarnation by funding the building of Buddhist pagodas when he’s old.

U Po Kyin summons a servant and asks whether anyone wants to see him. The servant rattles off a list of people with “presents” for U Po Kyin, a village girl who claims she has had U Po Kyin’s baby, and a clerk named Ko Ba Sein. U Po Kyin tells the servant to order one man to increase the value of his present and to bring in Ko Ba Sein. When Ko Ba Sein approaches, U Po Kyin asks how their plot is going. Ko Ba Sein shows him a nationalist paper, the Burmese Patriot, in which an anonymous article accuses Deputy Commissioner Mr. Macgregor of having fathered children on poor Burmese girls.

After U Po Kyin praises the apprentice clerk who ghostwrote the article, Ko Ba Sein asks whether the article will be “enough.” U Po Kyin says it’s a start—they’re planning to ruin the reputation of Dr. Veraswami, an Indian surgeon who superintends the jail, and so they must convince the British that Dr. Veraswami holds anti-imperial opinions. When Ko Ba Sein points out that Dr. Veraswami is loyal to the British, U Po Kyin says that won’t matter: “When a man has a black face, suspicion is proof.” Their next move is to convince the British that Dr. Veraswami wrote the article about Mr. Macgregor.

Ko Ba Sein mentions that Dr. Veraswami has a friend among the British, a timber merchant named Mr. Flory. U Po Kyin isn’t worried: the British aren’t loyal to their non-white friends, and Flory is a “coward.” The main goal is to make Mr. Macgregor suspect the doctor, and then U Po Kyin will effect “the other affair.” U Po Kyin dismisses Ko Ba Sein. He sees the girl who claims he impregnated her, denies he ever met her, and calls for his breakfast.

U Po Kyin’s wife Ma Kin serves him breakfast. Afterward, she criticizes him for doing evil, asking why he plans to hurt the good doctor Veraswami, U Po Kyin says that he’ll compensate for his evil by building pagodas. Ma Kin begs him to “acquire more merit” by doing some good deeds—for example, by feeding some hungry priests. U Po Kyin, who thinks of good deeds as a kind of “bank deposit,” does decide to send some mangoes to the monastery.